Monday of Holy Week

When I learned that the fourth Monday of March (I write a reflection for the fourth Monday every month) this year is Monday of Holy Week, I immediately looked at the Mass for Monday of Holy Week in my 1962 St. Andrew Daily Missal, curious to see whether it was at all like the day in the post-Vatican II Lectionary. I remembered that in 1962, the Gospels on two of the three days were the Passion narratives in Mark (Tuesday) and Luke (Wednesday). The Gospel on Palm Sunday was always Saint Matthew’s Passion, and the Gospel on Good Friday then, as now, was Saint John’s Passion. Nowadays, the three Synoptic passion narratives take turns as the Palm Sunday Gospel. When I compared Monday in Holy Week in 1962 to Monday in Holy Week this year, I was delighted to find that they both use the same Gospel passage (John 12:1-9 in 1962 and John 12:1-11 today), where Jesus dines with Lazarus, Martha, and Mary in Bethany. Each uses one of the Suffering Servant Songs — why, I wonder, not the same one?

The four Songs of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah are universally revered as stunning reflections on the central mystery of our Christian faith, the passion, death, and Resurrection of the Suffering Servant, Jesus Christ. In Holy Week now, we hear the first Song on Monday, the second on Tuesday, and the third on Wednesday; the fourth — the longest and most moving of the series — is the first reading of the Good Friday liturgy. In 1962, Massgoers heard as the Epistle from Isaiah 50:5-10, the third Suffering Servant Song, on Monday of Holy Week. I suggest you take some prayer time today to read the Gospel, the Third Song, and then the First. Do you see any relationship between the Songs and the Gospel?

Happy Holy Week – Happy Easter to us all!

Prayer:

O God, who willed your Son to submit for our sake to the yoke of the Cross, so that you might drive from us the power of the enemy, grant us, your servants, to attain the grace of the resurrection. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Prayer of the Mass for Monday of Holy Week for at least the last 455 years)